


You're Mine (Be Mine)

by moonrise31



Series: once, twice, and again until it's over [5]
Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, also thank you pocari sweat for a wonderful winter themed cf, love is timing, now everyone say it with me, we need more nahyo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 06:32:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13805475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonrise31/pseuds/moonrise31
Summary: In which Jihyo never considers a lot of things about the impending apocalypse, and one of those things is Im Nayeon.





	You're Mine (Be Mine)

The end of the world oozes in like an oil slick: dark, smoky, and putrid. Jihyo only chooses to ignore it.

It's so much easier, after all, to stay happy with her convenience store, which is just one of countless others in the city. But hers has her best friend as its only employee and is nestled right inside the train station, with easy access to a flood of foot traffic and a fair amount of regulars.

There's the Japanese trio, as she calls them in her head. They'd started as a pair, Momo and Sana, but Jihyo thinks that Mina moving in has brought some balance into the older girls' lives; at the very least, they eat healthier now -- more greens, for sure, and Jihyo only widened her eyes slightly the first time three bottles of ketchup made their way to the checkout counter.

(Tomatoes are vegetables, after all, she reasoned in the face of Mina's brilliantly shy smile).

Then there are the three high school students who always stop by for snacks before boarding the train home after classes every day. For whatever reason, a week had passed before Jihyo was able to catch any of their real names, but "Tofu" often slipped out from passing conversations, and Jihyo had already taken to labeling "Simba" and "Yoda" in her head based on other pieces of eavesdropped banter. 

(They remind her of when she was their age, and maybe that's what has her always slipping an extra bar of chocolate in with the rest of their purchases).

And then there's the idiot who gets off the train three stops early every evening just so she can come by the convenience store and…talk.

"Don't you have friends you could be hanging out with, Im Nayeon?" Jihyo huffs as she counts the bills in the cash register.

Nayeon, elbows on the table and chin propped in her hands, shoots Jihyo her best pout. "Are you saying that you're not my friend, Park Jihyo?"

"Yes," Jeongyeon yells from somewhere in the shadows of the storeroom. "That's exactly what she's saying."

"The lady can speak for herself," Nayeon shouts back, and Jihyo absentmindedly decides that Nayeon must have been in public speaking before she graduated, if her lung capacity has anything to say about it. 

(Or maybe even choir, Jihyo thinks before she can stop herself from wondering about how Nayeon's voice sounds like mid-song.)

Jihyo clears her throat pointedly, and then slides a plastic bag across the counter. "Here you go." 

Nayeon glances down at it; Jihyo can clearly envision the question marks floating above the older woman's head. "I didn't buy anything, though."

"It's what you always get," Jihyo explains patiently. "A cup of curry-flavored ramyun and a bottle of Pocari Sweat."

Nayeon beams at her, and Jihyo forgets for a moment that the sun has already set and light is no longer filtering in through the back windows. "So you _do_ pay attention."

"Just enough to make sure you don't hang around too long," Jihyo tells her, and rolls her eyes when Nayeon blows an exaggerated kiss before exiting the store -- the little bell above the door rings her out of sight, if not out of Jihyo's mind.

"Hey." Jeongyeon appears, clipboard in hand. "Did they drop off the new potato shipment this morning?"

Jihyo shakes her head. "They're running a little behind schedule."

Jeongyeon frowns. "It's been a week, Jihyo. That's more than 'a little behind'."

"We can switch vendors," Jihyo says primly, pulling out the notebook she'd been scribbling in the night before. "I've got a few candidates I'll start talking to, first thing tomorrow."

Jeongyeon nods.

Somewhere, hundreds of kilometers away from their small nameless city, the air thickens.

-

Tzuyu's family is the first to leave after the bombs hit just south of the North Korean border. Dahyun and Chaeyoung stop showing before the week is up; Jihyo hasn't heard any official announcement about canceling school, but maybe their parents have simply ordered them to start coming straight home after class.

(Somehow, though, Jihyo's heart feels heavier at the prospect of never being able to give any of the three another piece of chocolate.)

Mina takes on an exchange program in the United States, and Sana and Momo transfer to separate universities in Japan. Sana leaves her contact information on the bottom of their last receipt -- three times as long because they always pay for groceries together -- and promises that they'll come back once the dust has settled. 

(Jihyo almost believes her.)

By the end of the month, Jeongyeon cements plans with her sister to travel even further south, away from the encroaching fighting front. And she tries and tries to get Jihyo to leave, too. But in the end, she understands -- understands how Jihyo likes the slight curve in the tracks right in front of the store that makes the train screech as it passes by, how she likes the view from the window in the far corner that gives a perfect square of the horizon every dawn and dusk, how she likes -- 

The bell chimes, and Im Nayeon walks in.

"Jeongyeon left, too?" Nayeon asks after a few minutes of wandering the aisles. "That's too bad. I'm actually going to miss her a little bit."

"Aren't _you_ going to leave, Im Nayeon?" Jihyo asks before she can stop herself.

Nayeon looks up. "Where would we run to, Park Jihyo?"

That night, Jihyo sits alone in the storeroom, counting empty spaces instead of potato crates, and wonders if leaving would be so bad.

-

Bombshells hitting the train station is probably an accident, to be quite honest: only some pieces of shrapnel dropping by on their way to destroying bigger and grander things.

It's just Jihyo's luck that she's inside when it happens.

The train had stopped running since three days ago, so when she hears the sudden screech of metal, she freezes in the middle of arranging dusty shelves. The ground shakes, the walls crumble, glass shatters. Jihyo curls into herself behind the counter.

Then the air stills, hanging eerie and silent, and Jihyo counts each frantic beat of her heart that thuds into her ribcage. 

(Thump thump thump. Inhale.

Thump thump thump. Exhale.

Thump thump thump. Exhale, and try not to let her throat catch this time.)

When Jihyo chances a peek over the countertop, she's not sure what to think. There's a big hole in the ceiling now, right above where the horizon window used to be. Produce and other foodstuff are scattered across the floor, among chunks of concrete and jagged pieces of piping.

 _Well_ , Jihyo thinks as she straightens shaky knees and steps into the miraculously untouched storeroom, _there's nothing a broom can't start to fix_.

She's in the middle of heaving asphalt blocks out of her store and onto the torn and twisted train tracks when she hears hurried footsteps echo off the broken walls, and also a relentless panting. Moments later, a familiar figure almost collapses at her feet.

"Why are you here?" Jihyo demands.

Nayeon glances up at her, hands on knees as she gasps out between heavy inhales, "Why wouldn't I be?"

Jihyo blinks, and then gestures helplessly at the heap of cement that used to be part of her store. "Well, it seems like the world is ending. I thought you'd have noticed that by now."

"Oh. No, I didn't." Nayeon straightens, shoulders heaving one last time as she put her hands on her hips and gives the train track a onceover. "I was too busy running."

When Jihyo's face breaks this time, it's into a ragged smile.

-

(By the weekend, Jihyo's apartment building crumbles under a storm of fire and metal. But she can't find much energy to care, especially since she's already taken to sleeping on the storeroom floor every night, Nayeon tucked under the blankets on the couch less than a meter away.

Nayeon always tries to get them to switch places, but it only takes a look and an implicit threat to bring age into the equation for her to sigh and give in for another night.

"I'm just trying to be a good friend," Nayeon tells her. "Or at least, a good guest. Can't you let me do this much, Park Jihyo?"

"You're not a guest," Jihyo says simply. "And you're not a friend, either." Nayeon's fingers are tangled in the edge of the blanket, but Jihyo doesn't miss how the older woman's grip tightens. So she chooses that moment to add quietly, "Okay, unnie?"

If Jihyo had known from the start how easy it is to make Nayeon's cheeks flush, they'd probably have started holding hands much sooner.)

-

The thing about apocalyptic movies, Jihyo reflects, is that they're always set in the summer time. While here, in her twisted dystopia of a young adult life, winter settles on the city: a hasty dusting of cold and ice to cover the gaping wounds underneath.

Jihyo's storeroom had run out of supplies a few weeks ago, but the two of them have taken to going out into the city ruins together to dig among the rubble. They never stray far from each other because there's strength in numbers, even if it's just one more than being alone. Still, they want to cover as much ground in as little time as possible, which is why Jihyo is by herself when she discovers an untouched package of bottled water in the skeleton of another convenience store.

She hoists the package up, balancing it on her forearms as she turns to head back to Nayeon. She barely has time to shift her footing and spin out of the way as a hulking shape hurtles at her from the late afternoon shadows.

"Can I help you?" Her question hisses out in an agitated cloud of white mist, arms already aching from hugging the water close.

"I'm sorry," the man tells her, and she believes him, even as she takes a step back to match his advance. "It's just -- look, I have a daughter. Her name is Jeongyeon. She's sick, and we -- we need that water."

Jihyo stops. It's not Yoo Jeongyeon, she knows. It's not _her_ Jeongyeon. But why does it make a difference only now, while she stands in the middle of a broken city full of broken people, suffocated by a resolve chillier than the sharp snow crunching beneath her feet?

The man lunges.

Her fingers slip against the plastic. He shoves her back as he wrenches the package out of her grasp, sending her crashing into the rubble. His heavy boots scramble against the smaller chunks of concrete underfoot, clacking them dully against each other as he disappears without another word.

Nayeon finds Jihyo like this, on her side and staring blankly at the gray remains of a half-burnt convenience store sign, clutching at her bleeding knee. Nayeon kneels down, removing her scarf so she can rewrap it around Jihyo's leg.

"At least we have a first aid kit back at the store," is all Nayeon says.

Jihyo can only nod.

-

Nayeon pushes Jihyo back to the train station on a spare tire she'd unearthed from half a block away. It hits Jihyo then, as she finally takes note of Nayeon's breath brushing the top of her head with each labored huff. "Why did you even have this tire in the first place?"

"Oh." Nayeon takes her cue to stop and straighten, arching backwards until they both hear her spine crack. "I thought we could find a place to go snow tubing."

Jihyo stares at her. "Snow tubing?"

Nayeon meets her gaze and shrugs. "What else is there to do?"

Four snowflakes drift through the air, lazily landing on Jihyo's cheeks and dotting the skin under her eyes like watery freckles, before she realizes that Nayeon is right.

One of the storefronts just outside the train station has been punched into submission enough by mortar rounds to create a reasonable slope after a few nights of snowfall. It's this makeshift hill that Nayeon shoves Jihyo up along now, giving one final push before they're teetering but balanced at the top.

"Are you ready?" Nayeon asks, settling herself behind Jihyo, legs propped so the younger woman can hold onto them instead of the tire rim. She lets out a scream when Jihyo suddenly kicks them off the edge with her good leg.

They spin and bump and Nayeon almost rolls off in a shower of snow, but the ride only lasts a few short seconds. The tire skids to a stop at the bottom, and Nayeon flops forward, cheek pressed into Jihyo's back.

"Will you say it?" Nayeon whispers. "Just this once?"

Jihyo can't see Nayeon from her current position, but she can imagine: Nayeon's ridiculous white hat, mostly, the fluffy ear flaps keeping all but a few strands of light brown hair from framing flushed cheeks like some kind of Renaissance halo. 

It fits, Jihyo thinks. Because Nayeon has more than just the smile of an angel.

Jihyo twists with some effort, nudging her cold nose against the upturned collar of Nayeon's coat. "No," she tells her. Nayeon only hums, and Jihyo giggles, too, lifting a hand to point. "Not now. Look."

The soldiers -- safe soldiers -- reach them just a minute later, a stretcher already between them so that Nayeon can rest Jihyo on top of it. 

The world might be ending, Jihyo knows even as she's carried towards the waiting helicopter. But at least they'll live another day for Nayeon to keep chasing.

(Nayeon gives her hand a squeeze, and Jihyo smiles as she squeezes back.)

Jihyo can't wait for her to catch up.

**Author's Note:**

> Come ship Nahyo and 35 other pairings with me over at Twitter @moonrise31


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